Applicants' system is in the field of software-implemented methods, systems and articles of manufacture for predictively and graphically administering networks, computers, software systems, logical networks or other components of an information system in a time dimension.
Existing enterprise management application software has very limited ability to index events against time. Using such typical prior art software, a system administrator usually views a system or a malfunctioning component of a system at the present moment, with references to past events being limited to a possible static charting or displaying of historical events. Viewing a past event dynamically at a past point in time cannot be accomplished.
Predicting and viewing future events, and displaying those events by scrolling forward or backward in time, in a way analogous to viewing events as when forwarding or rewinding videotapes while viewing the videotape, has not been possible.
Every organization is subject to chronic conditions comprising combinations of events or particular mixes of workload which tend to lead to problem scenarios occurring. Applicants' system enables users to detect and correct these conditions before they cause serious difficulties.
These different types of chronic conditions have a number of features in common: in order to detect the condition before a failure actually occurs it is useful to retain historical information on the various health factors; the trends in the historical information of the health factors should be continually monitored to predict the onset of a failure; some failures only happen when multiple trigger-factors occur in combination. It is therefore useful to monitor the overall combination of health factors to find usage patterns which typically lead to failures occurring; and the interactions may be so complex that it may not be possible to logically determine which patterns of events can lead to a failure. So a heuristic capability is advisable which can look for similarities in patterns across a period of time and learn through experience to recognize problem situations.
An application program that allows users to navigate among complex data structures often uses the technique of drill-down: at any one level in the view, you can enter some entity visible in the user interface (an icon, an entry in a list, a 3-D object in a scene, or something similar) and see its contents.
Many different variations of this concept exists. The entities may be elements of a program, chapters in a document, items in a catalog, computers and routers managed in a network. The contents may be further objects of the same type, having properties such as price and materials, or statistical measures such as performance and load. To enter the entity, you might double-click, fly into the object in a 3-D scene, or use any other technique.
This drill-down technique is useful, but it has some disadvantages. The operator may have to drill down into several entities, each time going back out to the outer level; the drill-down itself may take more time and more interaction than is convenient; and one cannot readily compare the contents or properties of several items at the same time.
Because existing information management tools have looked at a system being managed from a single point in time, management tools have been reactive rather than predictive. Only when a problem actually arose was there a reactive solution.